Peter Wilhelm Lund
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Peter Wilhelm Lund (1801 – 1880) was a Danish zoologist and paleontologist.
He was born in a wealthy family and studied Medicine at the University of Copenhagen. In 1825 he made his first trip to Brazil, where he spent three years mainly collecting plants near Rio de Janeiro. Back to Europe in 1829, he achieved a doctoral degree at the University of Kiel, traveled to Italy and later established in Paris, where he came under the influence of Georges Cuvier, professor of comparative anatomy at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle and the most influential naturalist and zoologist of the time.
In his Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe (1825), Cuvier theorized that the extinction of species was caused by natural catastrophes on certain regions of the world. When that happens, the fauna from other regions migrate top populate the now uninhabited area. This became known as the catastrophic theory, and would become the motto of Lund's scientific career.
By 1833, Lund decided to visit Brazil again, and he spent the next two years collecting specimens in the provinces of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. But in 1835, while traveling through the province of Minas Gerais, he discovered several caves full of fossilized bones from extinct Ice Age megafauna species.
Lund eventually established himself at Lagoa Santa, a tiny inland village, and dedicated the next eight years to excavate, collect, classify and study more than 20,000 bones of extinct species, like mastodons and ground sloths. He was the first to described dozens of species, among them the world-famous Saber-toothed cat (Smilodon populator). His exploration took place mainly in the region of Lagoa Santa, which is rich in caves and karst formations and nowadays comprises the northern part of Greater Belo Horizonte, with municipalities like Lagoa Santa, Santa Luzia, Pedro Leopoldo and Sete Lagoas.
But in 1843, during a severe drought, he discovered deep in a flooded cave fossilized skulls and bones of 30 human beings. Since these individuals were found among the remains of extinct species, this came in frontal opposition to Cuvier's catastrophic theory.
In the following year, Lund suddenly stopped the work in the caves, alleging lack of resources to finance the excavations. He then donated his huge collection to the king and the people of Denmark. Alleging these time a fragile health condition, he decided to stay in Lagoa Santa, never to return to Europe.
The next 35 years were spent exchanging letters with the curators of his collections in Copenhagen, as well as receiving the visit of young European naturalists. The complete study of his collections, E Museo Lundii, was published only in 1888.
While his life in Lagoa Santa he hosted several European naturalists, as the Danish botanist Eugenius Warming. Lund never married and died in Lagoa Santa at the age of 79.
